AT&T To Acquire DirecTV For Nearly $50B

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As has been rumored for the past few weeks, AT&T has just officially announced their plans to acquire DirecTV.

The terms of the deal came together at roughly $95 per share, which comes to a grand total of $48.5 billion dollars.

If you add in the nearly $19B worth of debt that DirecTV is towing behind it, though, this deal sets AT&T back to a tune closer to $67 billion.

It seems DirecTV will continue to operate as a (mostly) independent company for at least a while, even after the deal closes. They’re keeping their headquarters in El Segundo, CA, and AT&T is pledging to offer stand-alone DirecTV service for at least 3 years.

Next step: AT&T and DirecTV have to convince a bunch of regulators (in both the US and Latin America, where DirecTV has a fairly huge customer base — it’s where roughly 20% of its revenue comes from) that this merger is a good idea. AT&T expects that to take at least 12 months — so if you’re worried about the deal impacting your service in any negative ways, know that you’ve got a year or so before that can even start to happen.